Mexican Hometown Associations in Chicagoacán

From Local to Transnational Civic Engagement

Xóchitl Bada

Publication Year: 2014

Chicago is home to the second-largest Mexican immigrant population in the United States, yet the activities of this community have gone relatively unexamined by both the media and academia. In this groundbreaking new book, Xóchitl Bada takes us inside one of the most vital parts of Chicago’s Mexican immigrant community—its many hometown associations.

Hometown associations (HTAs) consist of immigrants from the same town in Mexico and often begin quite informally, as soccer clubs or prayer groups. As Bada’s work shows, however, HTAs have become a powerful force for change, advocating for Mexican immigrants in the United States while also working to improve living conditions in their communities of origin. Focusing on a group of HTAs founded by immigrants from the state of Michoacán, the book shows how their activism has bridged public and private spheres, mobilizing social reforms in both inner-city Chicago and rural Mexico.

Bringing together ethnography, political theory, and archival research, Bada excavates the surprisingly long history of Chicago’s HTAs, dating back to the 1920s, then traces the emergence of new models of community activism in the twenty-first century. Filled with vivid observations and original interviews, Mexican Hometown Associations in Chicagoacán gives voice to an underrepresented community and sheds light on an underexplored form of global activism.

Title Page, Series Page, Copyright, Dedication

Contents

Preface

This book follows the challenges and opportunities of Michoacán hometown
associations (HTAs) in their efforts to influence the civil societies and governments
of two nations—Mexico
and the United States. The book is based on formal
interviews and conversations with HTA leaders, government officials, and
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) engaged in transnational activities in ...

Acknowledgments

This is a story about migrant lives and their relationships to their governments
and villages of origin, and I am indebted to all those who allowed me to get close
enough to understand their binational struggles. They may not agree with all my
interpretations, but I hope that our mutual efforts to bring visibility and recognition
for their contributions to Mexico and the United States will eventually lead...

1. Migrant Generosity and Transnational Civic Engagement

Uptown, Chicago, December 18, 2010. Fifty members of El Rincón de Dolores
hometown club have gathered with friends and families for a posada, a traditional
Mexican pre-Christmas
celebration. In a small party room adjacent to the
pancake restaurant of Hugo,1 a former club president, they’re preparing to sing
the verses that reenact Mary and Joseph’s pilgrimage....

2. The Transformation of Mexican Migrant Organizations

On June 2, 1928, Mexican presidential nominee José Vasconcelos gave a speech at
Jane Addams’s Hull House on Chicago’s Near West Side. Vasconcelos’s appearance
was sponsored by the Ignacio Zaragoza mutual aid society.1 The meeting
did not attract a large crowd because the play Don Juan Tenorio was being held
simultaneously somewhere else. Only fifty people from different mutual aid societies...

3. Genealogies of Hometown Associations

Previous studies on transnational communities have addressed the multiple
civic engagements of Zacatecan hometown federations in Southern California,
the transnational lives of Poblano migrants in New York, and the transnational
topographies of Oaxacans from San Juan Mixtepec across Mexican-U.
S. geographies.
These studies offer a clear picture of the different political and geographical...

4. Migrant Clubs to the Rescue

April 28, 2010, 6:30 p.m. Migrant club leaders take their seats in the conference room
at the Mexican consulate in the West Loop neighborhood in Chicago. The event
is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m., but organizers decide to wait a little longer to
accommodate those stuck in traffic; they expect 120 leaders from Indiana, Michigan,
and Wisconsin. The meeting has been organized by the Chicago office of the...

5. Participatory Planning across Borders

On a sultry summer morning in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood in 2010, the
conference room at Casa Michoacán is bustling. The governor of Michoacán is
about to inaugurate the meeting of the Project Evaluation and Migrant Affairs
Committee (COVAM),1 and the media wants to capture the moment. This is the
first time that this committee has met outside of Morelia, and migrant hometown...

6. Expanding Agendas and Building Transnational Coalitions

In 2011, more than a decade after the creation of the Federation of Michoacán
Clubs in Illinois (FEDECMI), Casa Michoacán bustles with activity, reflecting
its motto: “Opening Borders, Uniting Communities.” In February, it hosted a
meeting with Linda Machuca, one of the first Ecuadoran migrants to win a seat
in Ecuador’s congress representing migrants living in North America. Machuca...

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the simple Search box at the top of the page or the Advanced Search linked from the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the Advanced Search page or on your search results page. Click the Browse box to see a selection of books and journals by: Research Area, Titles A-Z, Publisher, Books only, or Journals only.